Ten Things You Might Not Know about Handel’s Messiah
by Noel Morris
1. The “Hallelujah” chorus isn’t Christmas music — or wasn’t.
It’s one of the top downloads during the Christmas season, yet it was actually written for Easter. The “Hallelujah” chorus proclaims Christ’s Resurrection and makes a splendorous finale to Part Two of Messiah. It was early in the 19th century that more and more choirs began to co-opt the famous chorus for Christmastime. The text of the “Hallelujah” chorus comes from the Book of Revelation, “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”
2. Much of the text from Messiah comes from the Old Testament.
Messiah is a compilation of Bible verses. Librettist Charles Jennens took the broad view of his subject, drawing extensively from the Hebrew prophets. Part One anticipates the birth of the Messiah using texts from the Books of Isaiah and Malachi, and only moves into the Nativity at the famous chorus “For unto us a child is born” (around thirty minutes into the piece). Part Two explores the relationship between the world’s iniquity and Christ the Redeemer. Much of its text comes from Isaiah and the Book of Psalms. Part Three, by far the shortest section, opens with verses from the Book of Job, and then shifts into the New Testament to celebrate the risen Christ: “O death, where is thy sting?”
Sources of Messiah include the Books of Isaiah, Haggai, Malachi, Luke, Zechariah, Matthew, John, Psalms, Lamentations, Romans, Revelation, Job, and 1 Corinthians.
3. Handel spoke in a jumble of languages.
Born in Halle (in modern-day Germany) to a prominent surgeon, Handel, né Georg Friedrich Händel, was schooled in both French and German. He spent his early twenties in Italy learning to compose in the style of Italian opera before landing in London in 1710. Traditionally, musicians were servants to members of the ruling class, but Handel sensed opportunity amid the new class of wealthy merchants and professionals — they were hungry for status and access to life’s finer things. The German composer’s “Italian operas” became all the rage. In 1727, Handel became a naturalized Englishman by Act of Parliament and changed his name to George Frideric Handel. Although he lived in London for the last forty-nine years of his life, he famously spoke English sprinkled with bits of German, French and Italian.
4. Messiah was premiered in Ireland.
By 1741, Londoners had lost interest in Handel’s Italian operas. Needing to recover from disastrous ticket sales, he accepted an invitation to a season-long residency in Dublin. From the moment he arrived, he was a celebrity again. Handel sold subscriptions from his house and presented two series of sold-out concerts that winter, setting aside his new oratorio, Messiah, until the Easter season. By the spring, there was such a buzz around the piece that Handel sold tickets to the dress rehearsal. As a precaution, the Dublin Journal ran advertisements suggesting that concertgoers refrain from wearing swords or hoop skirts in order to make “room for more company.” Messiah premiered in the Great Music Hall on April 13, 1742. The concert benefitted a debtor’s prison and hospital. According to the composer, some seven hundred people squeezed into the six hundred-seat theater.
5. Some people found Messiah indecent.
In certain circles, theaters were considered places of ill repute. Jonathon Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels and Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, initially tried to prevent his choir from participating in the world premiere of Messiah for fear that it would sully its reputation. Swift also objected to the participation of contralto Susannah Cibber who was scandalized by divorce. (Swift eventually backed down.) At Messiah’s London debut the following year, there were murmurs of indecency surrounding the singing of Biblical texts from the stage of a theater.
Ironically, it was due to cries of indecency that Handel began writing oratorios in the first place. Opera had been banned in Rome by papal decry, so Handel skirted the issue by writing oratorios (dramatic works in an operatic style on biblical subjects — minus the sets and costumes).
In the 1750s, Messiah caught on when performances moved to a chapel at the Foundling Hospital; the work became part of Handel’s annual benefit for orphans. Soon, Covent Garden took up the tradition of performing Messiah during Lent, when opera was forbidden.
6. There is no definitive version of Messiah.
Handel was as much impresario as composer. He continually rewrote his works to suit a particular performance. He would transpose or rewrite music for particular singers, delete or add movements and often inserted entire organ concertos between acts. As was common during the Baroque, Handel used varied combinations of keyboard and bass instruments to cover the part of basso continuo, including organ, harpsichord, bassoon, cello, harp and theorbo (a large lute).
As Messiah grew in popularity, so grew the size of the orchestra. The 1742 Dublin premiere employed a few soloists, a chorus of eight boys and sixteen men, plus a modest orchestra. By 1787, Westminster Abbey advertised an ensemble of eight hundred.
7. He wrote it in 24 days.
Messiah runs about two hours and twenty minutes; that means Handel wrote around 45 minutes of music per week. He finalized the piece on September 14, 1741, with the dedication “SDG,” or Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God alone).
Incredibly, keeping a breakneck pace was more the rule than the exception with Handel. He routinely composed an oratorio in a month’s time, although his fluency was helped by his use of recycled material. In Messiah, for example, he lifted “For unto us a child is born” and “All we like sheep have gone astray” from his duet “Nò, di voi non vo’ fidarmi” (“No, I will never trust you”).
8. Messiah is packed with word painting.
To represent the flogging of Jesus, for example, Handel creates a cascading effect by laying one statement of “And with His Stripes” upon another. That’s followed by the chorus “All we like sheep have gone astray.” Here, Handel begins with a strong, unified proclamation: “All we like sheep!” But on the word “astray,” the four sections of the chorus peel away from one another, meandering across the musical landscape. It might also be argued that having the tenors sing a series of couplings on an “A” vowel, mimics the sheep’s bleating.
9. A page of Messiah is engraved on a tomb in Westminster Abbey.
On April 6, 1759, Handel attended a performance of Messiah at Covent Garden. He died eight days later on Holy Saturday and was laid to rest in the south transept of Westminster Abbey. A life-size monument sculpted by Louis-François Roubiliac portrays the composer clasping a page from the soprano aria “I know that my redeemer liveth” from Messiah. The composer’s face is a replica of his death mask. The cost of the monument was covered by Handel’s estate. Much of his remaining fortune was divided between his favorite charities.
10. Why do people stand during the “Hallelujah” chorus?
That’s a very good question. Possibly some trivia lover told you that it is because King George II was so moved by the music that he stood up when he heard it in 1743. As a rule, when the king stands, everybody stands. But scholars have been unable to confirm the presence of his royal personage at that concert. There are numerous newspaper and eyewitness accounts, but none mentions the King (it seems unlikely that the King’s presence would go unnoticed). The earliest known source of George II’s famous gesture is second-hand, an account given in the 1770s by a man named James Beattie: “They were so transported,” Beattie wrote, “that they all, together with the king (who happened to be present) started up and remained standing.” According to sources, standing during different choruses of Messiah happened as early as the 1750s. Whatever the reason for it, the tradition endures today.
